PGY-1: First Month

So, as another July 1st has come and passed, neophyte first years have begun their training in pathology residency training programs across the country. Many will begin with either a bootcamp-style orientation and/or an introduction to surgical pathology. Although I do have a PGY-1 friend who started with a CP rotation (and not an intro one at that).

I was fortunate to have a creative surgpath director who has an interest in different styles of medical education during my PGY-1. During the last two weeks of June, in addition to the general administrative orientation requirements, we had what we affectionately refer to as our “bootcamp.” First, we were taught proper blade/cutting technique with various food products (eg – potatoes, bratwurst) to get a feel for how to adjust our cutting technique for various specimen consistencies.

She was truly dedicated and personally went to a butcher in Chicago and picked up pig organ blocks three times for us during those two weeks. Then she and one of our two surgical fellows instructed us in the Rokitansky en bloc method of autopsy dissection after we had watched a narrated DVD that she had created from the previous year PGY-1 training sessions. We then would have to complete a fourth unsupervised pig block dissection and need to score at least a 75% in order to pass our autopsy competency exam. Those who did not pass, had to repeat the exam.

We also learned how to cut mock uteri and prostates since these are common specimens. She had molded and frozen ground turkey to simulate these organs and even added surprises like chick peas to represent leiomyomas. We practiced how to bivalve and cut the uteri for both endometrial and cervical cancers as well as how to gross prostates…although I did go through the whole year and never get one until I rotated in the fall of my second year at the VA where I got them almost daily.

Additionally, in order to learn how to cut frozen sections, we took ten sections from various organs from our pig blocks and embedded, cut, and stained frozen sections. This way we could understand how certain sections cut better than others (eg – fatty tissue is more difficult to cut), how to orient them, and how to cut them well without folding and unevenness. We were then graded on our sections for frozen section competency exam. For those who did not pass, they got some personal remediation at the cryostat with our assistant director of surgical pathology.

In the gross room, we had PAs who were good at teaching. We practiced dictating biopsies and placentas, grossing placentas, and grossing “smalls” like an appendix or gallbladder. Twice a week, we had multi-scope subspecialty sessions in dermpath, liver, renal, and neuropath since most of these types of specimens go to either our fellows or the subspecialty pathologists and our first years rarely saw them.

We initially started with a six-person, six-day schedule of frozens, grossing biopsies/smalls/bigs preview, grossing bigs, autopsy, peds path, and neuropath for 1.5 months. Our PAs usually gross our biopsies and benign smaller specimens. Then we were whittled down to a four-person, four-day schedule of frozens, preview, bigs, and autopsy with two of us taking “mandatory” vacations. The two residents that remained on SP after our five months of intro to SP were incorporate into our standard three-person, three-day schedule of frozen/grossing bigs, biopsy/smalls signout/bigs preview, and bigs signout.

At my new program, it is different because we don’t have surgpath fellows. Since we are a small program, each senior resident serves as a co-chief and one of their responsibilities is the training of the PGY-1 residents in surgpath during an initial one-month intro to SP rotation. Other senior residents on the surgpath rotation also help out with the teaching. They also give AM lectures on grossing topics in Lester’s Manual of Surgical Pathology and the specific nuances of the grossing preferences of our attendings.

As for me, I start off with a comprehensive CP rotation that combines working in both the chemistry and microbiology sections. As a PGY-1 here, they have 2 months of ‘Wet Lab’ or an intro to CP rotation. But since I am a PGY-3 transfer, I am a cross between a PGY-1 in terms of knowing how things are exactly done here and a senior resident. So this month for me combines intro to SP, Wet Lab, and the subsequent comp CP rotation that would come after Wet Lab. So, I get to gross a little (since things may be done differently here), learn about where and how things are done in the labs, and study more specialized CP topics. Since I came from a program where we rotate at four different hospitals for surgpath and can be self-directed in terms of CP, this works fine for me but still can be initially daunting in terms of trying to fit in do things the way they would like them done here.

So what do you think are the best ways to train PGY-1 residents most effectively? Should they start off with an intro to SP rotation and how should that be structured in terms of time, topic areas, and teaching of those topic areas? Or does it matter if they don’t do an intro to SP rotation and go straight into a CP rotation? And who should teach them how to gross? Let us know how things are done at your institution.

-Betty Chung, DO, MPH, MAis a third year resident physician at Rutgers – Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ.